


i was a dreamer (before you went and let me down)

by screamlet



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Breakfast, Breaking Up & Making Up, F/M, Female Bilbo, Female Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Gen, Genderbending, TAYLOR SWIFT SONG TITLE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It seems you don’t recall many things very well, Miss Baggins.”<br/>“Stop calling me that.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was a dreamer (before you went and let me down)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leupagus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/gifts).



> Set between _The Hobbit_ and _Lord of the Rings_ , while Frodo lives with Bilbo but hasn't come of age yet. Doofy teenaged Frodo.
> 
> Written for **leupagus** for our mini gift exchange, where she prompted:  
>  _Frodo finds out that Thorin et al are, actually, alive and well and chilling in Erebor, and tries to figure out why the fuck Bilbo wrote the story as if Thorin died. If it turns out there was just an ugly breakup._
> 
> HAPPY HOLIDAYS, I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS. NOBODY DIES!

Long before Bilbo wrote the story of the Quest for Erebor—long before she put a word of it down, or even did more with her red book than pick it up and consider it before putting it back in its trunk—her nephew raised the question of the Company and its fate.

“You always end the story there,” Frodo said. “You come back here, the tunnels are overflowing with gold—”

“It was only one small chest,” Bilbo sighed.

“Is that it, Bilbo?” Frodo asked.

Bilbo raised her eyebrows; she thought him far too young to be asking these sorts of impertinent questions, questions that absolutely challenged the safe, warm, comfortable life they led together in Bag End, a life that Frodo seemed very satisfied with day in and day out. 

“What do you mean, _is that it_?” Bilbo asked. She smiled a little, just in the corner of her mouth, in what she hoped was an enigmatic and terrifying manner. 

Frodo, still young enough to be intimidated by his elders, stammered a little as he said, “Well, I mean—where are the dwarves now? The Company of Thorin Oakenshield? Where can I hear more of Erebor? Is the kingdom under the mountain still there?” That awkwardness in Frodo disappeared as more questions flew out of his mouth: “If ten of your companions survived, why don’t they visit? Does Gandalf bring you news of them when he visits? It’s been so long, aunt—don’t you ever want to see any of them again? Your one great adventure!”

“As a matter of fact, Frodo,” Bilbo said, “I don’t.” She smiled at him, his bright eyes brimming with disappointment that could only get worse if he knew the truth of Erebor and its king. “I had my adventure, Frodo, and now I have you.” Before either of them could get _too_ sentimental, she huffed a little and said, “I think that’s quite enough stories today for the Baggins family.”

She hoped Frodo would be satisfied with that answer. In any case, he didn’t bring it up again.

*

Frodo wasn’t satisfied with that answer, so he went to the most knowledgeable person in his immediate social circle: the old Gaffer, who Frodo saw regularly when he and his sons gardened at Bag End. 

“Gaffer,” Frodo said, “Do you know much about the Dwarf kingdoms of the east?”

“Mr. Frodo,” the old Gaffer replied, “I can very surely say that I know nothing about the Dwarf kingdoms of the east, except what from Miss Bilbo’s stories.”

“Oh,” Frodo said. “That’s unfortunate. Who could I ask about the Dwarf kingdoms of the east, Gaffer?”

“Where’s that wizard friend of yours?” the Gaffer asked.

“Mr. Frodo!” one of Gamgee sons said. “Mr. Frodo, you should ask the Lilies! At the Shire market!” 

“Who?” Frodo asked. This was a new Gamgee—not new in the world, of course, but new to the gardening at Bag End, a younger hobbit about his cousin Merry’s age. 

“The flower ladies, old Lily and young Lily!”

“Samwise Gamgee,” the old Gaffer said. “What are you doing, putting ideas into Mr. Frodo’s head and bringing trouble to those nice ladies at market? Get back to weeding.”

“But Mr. Frodo asked,” Samwise protested, “And there isn’t any harm in giving him their names, is it? He might not even go.”

“I might,” Frodo said. “And I might not. But I _might_.”

“Of course, sir,” Samwise said.

“Thank you for the suggestion,” Frodo added.

“At your service, sir,” Samwise said.

“Less fancy manners, my son, more weeding,” the old Gaffer said. He looked to Frodo and glanced him over carefully. “If that’s all the questions you’ll be needing answered, Mr. Frodo?”

“Yes, of course,” Frodo said. “Thank you very much.” He said loudly, “And thank you again, Sam.”

Sam only gave him a smile and continued his work, the better to avoid another comment from the old Gaffer or draw Bilbo’s attention from within the house.

*

As the youngest Gamgee had said, the Lilies were flower merchants. Since Bag End had such a rich garden and collection of blooms that Bilbo was quite satisfied with for the moment, they rarely had cause to visit with them when they came to market bringing blooms from outside the Shire. However, that didn’t stop Merry Brandybuck from suggesting they simply _go_.

“It seems rude to speak to them and purchase nothing,” Frodo said.

“Buy Bilbo something nice for your birthdays,” Merry said.

“Do you know,” Frodo said, “For all Bilbo spends on gardening, I’m not actually sure that she enjoys being given flowers like other ladies.”

Merry considered this and found himself agreeing. “Not a bouquet, perhaps, but maybe the Lilies have something that would make a nice wreath for the door of Bag End. Maybe something that senses unwanted visitors and shoots them on sight.”

“And take from Bilbo the satisfaction of driving them away with cold tea and a colder shoulder?” Frodo asked. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Well, _if you see one_ , at least consider it,” Merry said.

The Lilies were a grandmother and granddaughter. They didn’t live in Hobbiton or any of the surrounding towns, but came to the large Shire market the last weekend of every month to sell exotic flora that were as strange as the places and stories bundled with them. The hobbits, for all that they disliked change and anything that could upset their habits, tolerated the Lilies coming to market because they were polite, inoffensive objects of curiosity. The young Lily was head and shoulders taller than the elder Lily and, among the more gossip-oriented circles in Hobbiton, there was some speculation as to whether young Lily was actually a hobbit or… a small woman, perhaps. There was her height (compare to her hobbit grandmother) to consider and her ears, which weren’t pointed like hobbits’ ears, but were much larger and rounder than the ears of Men.

It was nothing that anyone asked the Lilies outright, of course, though from the smiles they offered their hobbit customers, it seemed that they knew of the speculation and even encouraged it, as it helped their sales.

Frodo and Merry wound slowly through the marketplace one morning and came to the Lilies’ table. They browsed for a few moments, Merry very determined to find this dream plant of his, the one that Miss Bilbo would love for its weaponized poniards and absolutely did not exist according to Bilbo’s extensive literature on the subject. Frodo browsed as well, but made his way sooner than he thought to where the Lilies were helping another customer. 

Young Lily smiled at a departing hobbit and looked on Frodo with a smile. Just then he noticed the beads hanging from the fringe of her hair and framing her face, one small bead hanging from the long, thin hairs on the side of her face just in front of her ears. Frodo silently added his own opinion to the collective pool of judgment and came to the conclusion that she was no hobbit—not entirely, anyway, not that it made a difference to him.

“Good morning,” she said. “Haven’t seen you here before. Are you in the market for something specific, or just come to say good morning?”

“Good morning,” Frodo said. “I’m not in the market for a plant, exactly—”

“Then good morning, sir, and very nice to meet you,” young Lily said.

“Yes, good morning, but—”

“And can I help you, sir?” young Lily asked Merry as he trailed along behind Frodo. 

Merry was several years Frodo’s junior, yet he was leagues more clever than Frodo, who was more clever than anyone of their acquaintance. On hearing Lily’s voice, Merry looked up, smiled, and said:

“Good morning, miss. My cousin Frodo here was wondering whether you had ever been to or heard news from the kingdom of Erebor, east of the Misty Mountains, ruled by Dain Ironfoot, King Under the Mountain when last we heard.”

“Oh,” young Lily said.

“And I’m in the market for a plant I’m not sure has ever or could ever exist,” Merry continued. “Frodo’s aunt has a great many visitors she’d like to see a great deal _less_ of, and maybe you would have a wreath that bites? Spits nettles? Bursts into flames on command?”

The Lilies stared at them. Old Lily broke first.

“You come with me,” she said to Merry. “I have the plant you’re looking for, though it can’t work in a wreath. If the lady has flower boxes where she receives visitors, they’ll do very well. Still interested?”

“Very,” Merry assured her.

“And you wish to know of Erebor,” young Lily said to Frodo. “Though I’m not sure where your friend got his information—Dain of the Iron Hills was barely a regent while the king and his heir recovered from their wounds.” She paused and asked, “Is the story really not known to your folk here? It’s been a good many years; the heir of Erebor has a young heir of his own at this point, and King Thorin…” She looked at Frodo and spread her hands open with a shrug. “He is King under the Mountain.”

“Thorin _Oakenshield_ ,” Frodo said with his clearest pronunciation.

Young Lily nodded at him. She tilted her head, then, and asked, “Why? What have you heard?”

And so Frodo explained that a relation of his (no, not the woman who wanted visitors murdered with plants, except yes, but young Lily didn't need to know that) had been connected to the company of Thorin Oakenshield but separated before the establishment of the new kingdom.

“I understand this may be a great deal to ask,” Frodo said, “But could you take a message from me to Erebor? It isn’t an important message at all, it’s simply—simply a message to say that this relation, who was on the quest with them, is here and living well.”

Young Lily looked at him some more before she nodded. “I’ll be here until end of market, and my grandmother and I leave tomorrow. Get your note to me, well-addressed, before the end of market and I’ll send it on its way.”

“Frodo!” Merry said. “This shoots spores! Only when touched, though, because I know how cousin Lobelia likes to touch everything in Bilbo’s house.”

“Good choice,” Frodo said. “Bilbo will love it. My cheeks will be spared Lobelia’s pinching, so _I’ll_ love it.” Frodo looked at the Lilies and said, “She doesn’t even like me, but she knows I hate my cheeks being pinched.”

One of the advantages of families as large as theirs was that, after Merry had paid the Lilies for Bilbo’s flowers, they could stop off at the closest house to the market, belonging to one of Merry’s cousins and Frodo’s second cousins, so Frodo could sit for a moment and write out a message that would travel across their world.

To pass the time, Merry had one of the sample flowers blow its spores in his most irritating cousin’s face when they tried to interrupt Frodo.

“Well?” Merry asked when they were walking back to the Lilies’ table a short time later. “What did you say? Did you invite the whole city of Erebor to Hobbiton? We don’t use the Party Field nearly often enough. Maybe we would even get fireworks for the occasion from a certain traveling pile of rags that sometimes resembles a wizard.”

“This letter may never reach Erebor, Merry,” Frodo reminded him. “We’ll just have to climb the Party Tree on our own time, and hope that one day a caravan of dwarves will ride into town to see Bilbo.”

“I’ll deliver these to Bilbo so I can see her face,” Merry said, “Then she’ll call me her wonderful little enabler and I’ll be her favorite for another moment or two. Then the two of us can go find Pippin and the others, get some drinks, and sit under that Party Tree, planning the dwarves’ marvelous arrival two or three years from now.”

Frodo agreed it sounded like an excellent plan. However, once the letter was in young Lily’s custody, they walked back to Bag End and completely forgot about everything except giving Bilbo the flowers they had brought for her.

*

Two summers later, just after the annual Midsummer party for the town, Bilbo and Frodo were walking along the path leading to the curved stair of Bag End when they noticed four dark-hooded figures ahead of them on the same path to the same front door of their little home.

“Bilbo, what are those?” Frodo whispered. 

“Are you a hobbit or an oliphaunt?” Bilbo snapped. “Keep quiet.”

Bilbo cursed herself silently for thinking it was a good night to wear a dress. Warm as the night was and light as the material was, there was no way to keep both her hands free and move without its length rustling along the ground. She picked up the hem of her skirts and began up the path to hear what the hooded figures were muttering to each other.

“It’s possible she doesn’t live here anymore,” one very male voice said.

“Our burglar? Give up _this_?” Bilbo arched her neck—that voice had come from the hooded figure knocking on her door.

“I only ask because if she’s not coming to the door, it means she’s likely turned in for the night. It’s early, but this is about when Signy and Ori start putting the dwarrow to bed. A ten-year-old dwarrow, respectable hobbits, they all have about the same exciting habits, don’t they?”

“Dwalin,” the second voice said, and that tone and that name was enough to make Bilbo trip over her own toe and catch herself without any commotion on the path to her house she knew better than herself. “If she is here—if we do get to see her—none of that talk.”

“With all due respect, _my king_ ,” Dwalin said. “Leaving the way she did, the fine breeding gone as soon as the treasure was in hand, the rest of us cleaning up the mess she left of you—I’ll restrain myself, but that’s more care than she gave you.”

“Even so,” the second voice replied.

Bilbo was sure the beating of her heart could be heard across the Shire, across the mountains, into the throne room of Erebor, where Thorin Oakenshield King under the Mountain could hear it and raise an eyebrow before returning to his mountain-king duties without giving her a second thought. The hooded figure knocking once more at her door hoping to hear her stirring within couldn’t be that same dwarf, come this far to her door with _Dwalin of all people_ simply to see her and ask for a cup of tea.

Frodo touched her arm and she did it, she ruined everything, she _yelped_ and swat at Frodo’s arm for scaring her in such a way. 

Three of the four hooded figures turned. Bilbo swat Frodo again and looked up the stairs: there in the moonlight were two guards she didn’t recognize, bearing the insignia of a kingdom she had only seen once and never with actual insignia of their own. There was Dwalin, who had pushed the hood away from his face, revealing new scars and new layers of contempt for her, even more than all those years ago when he had eaten her fish dinner and most of her pantry (with help from the rest of their Company).

There was a fourth figure in the back, one who hadn’t come forward yet, one whose voice Bilbo remembered far, far too well. She dropped her skirts and began to walk up the steps to her door, hoping to get a glance at the last dwarf.

The last dwarf, however, was behind Dwalin and their guards. She took another step and heard, “What is it? What—THIS PLANT.”

Bilbo called out, “What plant?”

“This orange _thing_ ,” the last dwarf said. “I brushed against it and it _attacked me_.”

From between Dwalin and one of the guards came Thorin, pushing his way through with his dark blue cloak and his dark hair and its grey streaks dotted with small but thick spiny orange spores. 

“Your plant,” Thorin said, motioning to his cloak. He glanced down at his hair and brushed some of the spores out. Bilbo was smiling against her will when he looked at her again, and he scowled because he knew he had missed a spore (by his left temple). “That wasn’t there last time.”

“That was a gift from my cousin,” Frodo called out.

Thorin looked at Frodo standing by Bilbo’s side, seeing him for the first time, and raised his eyebrows at Bilbo. “Yours?” he asked.

“My nephew,” she replied. “My ward.”

“Why is it impossible to enter this village without either getting lost or attacked by the local wildlife?” Thorin asked her as he stepped down to her. “This is why no one likes coming here.”

“As if so many of you have come this way,” Bilbo replied. “Do you carry those axes and mattocks for your health or for show? It can’t be for your defense, judging by your complaints.”

“Don’t encourage Dwalin,” Thorin said. “Ori would hate to hear of it, but he would take that tree down to spite you if I let him.”

“I might fall against it and take it with me,” Dwalin said.

Thorin looked over his shoulder and Dwalin nodded.

“Accidentally, of course,” Dwalin added. “Just saying it might happen.”

“What are you doing here?” Bilbo asked.

Thorin pushed the hood back completely from his head and stepped closer to Bilbo. “We’ve traveled across the world at your call, Miss Baggins. Am I to understand that your fine manners won’t even offer your former companions and their men a cup of tea?”

“I can put the kettle on,” Frodo suggested.

Bilbo turned quickly and said, “Thank you, Frodo, for being _so helpful_. Yes, go do that. Show Mr. Dwalin and the others inside.” She looked past Thorin at Dwalin. “You should remember where the pantry is, if they’re hungry.”

“For old time’s sake,” Dwalin replied. “Say goodbye to your scones.”

“They’re three days stale anyway,” she replied.

“The better to—”

“Dwalin,” Thorin said.

Frodo looked appropriately cowed as he walked around Thorin and then past Dwalin to the front door. The three others went in, though Bilbo could see Dwalin trying to hide by the front window in case he was needed for another smart remark.

“I don’t recall Dwalin being quite so protective of you,” Bilbo said.

“It seems you don’t recall many things very well, Miss Baggins.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Perhaps it was the mantle of new royalty on his shoulders, but Thorin seemed loaded with ten times more unimpressed splendor than when last they saw each other. He reached carefully into the folds of his cloak for a paper, one that she could tell on sight had been folded, worn, straightened, passed around, folded again, and now kept close to its owner. He opened it, looked at her face, then looked back to the paper so he could read to her:

_Your Majesty: I am the nephew of your traveling companion, Miss Bilbo Baggins of Hobbiton. I am given to understand that you are still lately the King under the Lonely Mountain and the city of Erebor, but I am given this information by others, not by Miss Baggins’s recollections of your Quest._

_In case there has been some misunderstanding, I should like to clarify the matter. Please know that Miss Baggins is well and still a resident of Hobbiton where you and your Company last saw her. Should you or any of your Company ever find yourselves near us in the West, we would be glad to have you as our honored guests._

When Thorin was finished reading, he showed her the letter for a moment before folding it again and tucking it back into a pocket. Bilbo crossed her arms and looked up the path at her kitchen window, where she could see Frodo pouring tea and laughing with the two guards sitting at their table.

“If it’s not clear from my expression at the moment,” Bilbo finally said without looking at Thorin, “I knew nothing about this letter, neither the writing nor the sending.”

“This came to me more than a year ago,” Thorin said. “I would have sent word back, but we already had a journey planned to the Blue Mountains.”

“And so you made it,” Bilbo said.

“And so I did.”

They continued to stand there, Thorin a good head taller than her and on the step above her, not that it made a difference to Bilbo, who had crossed her arms—the better to stare him down. 

They said nothing for a long moment. She raised her eyebrows when she saw that he was examining the tiny yellow flowers of the hedge next to them.

“What did you tell that boy about me?” Thorin asked.

“Don’t say _that boy_ as if he is _your boy_ ,” she replied. “He’s my nephew, my heir—yes, even hobbits need heirs, and he is mine.”

“What did you tell him?” Thorin repeated. “What did you say about the end of our quest that he would write to some strange, far-off king to assure him that you were well?”

“I can hardly explain what drives that boy to do anything.”

“And if I should tell him what happened?”

Bilbo pinned him with her fiercest stare. “And what happened, Your Majesty? Do remind me of the end of our story. I so _long_ to hear this version. It’s so rare I hear a good fiction these days. Did Bofur set it to song for you before you left?”

Thorin glared right back as he said, “I recall a hobbit who stood by my side through the quest that would define my life and my House for generations to come, until the Lonely Mountain itself comes crashing down into the earth and the world is finally broken. She stayed with me to the end of that quest. She was brave and loyal to me and our company to the last, and then when I would have her remain by my side, she left without word, apology, or explanation.” He lifted his chin at her and said, “Tell me where my memory fails me. Like you, I long to hear another side.”

Bilbo lifted her chin right back and thought that if she paused for just a moment, if she stopped to think about the road they were on and the things they were saying, she would stumble again and nothing would be said, nothing be settled. She couldn’t have that again—she’d had enough of that as it was.

“That’s a pretty story,” she replied. “Very pretty, though not at all the one I heard. I’ll skip the part where I found a particularly fine rock in all that treasure and the dwarf in _my_ story held a sword against me and threatened my life, all for that _stone_.” Bilbo raised a hand when she saw Thorin was about to speak. “This dwarf isn’t the same as the dwarf who appears in your story, obviously, because your hero was very noble and could never, _would_ never even contemplate such a thing, but as I said, I’m skipping all that.” 

Bilbo felt herself _on a roll_ , as it were, and was about to continue with a litany of every annoyance and contrivance and cross word and rudeness out of Thorin’s mouth on that quest, but—they both knew all that. She hadn’t hesitated to speak her mind when he offended her, and he hadn’t hesitated to speak right back, both of them going at each other until Kíli suggested that his uncle look over there wasn’t that a warg or a shooting star or something? And Bofur would suggest it was time for a pipe and a song, but Gandalf would tell them all to shut up, and the argument would be forgotten for another day or so.

Yet just then, she had a moment of clarity. It came back to her in a flash, like a current it pulled her back in and she had to turn her eyes away from Thorin and Bag End, looking off into the distance to center herself. When she spoke again, it was softer as she took care for the lump that had formed in her throat.

“It was that the quest was all we would ever be.” She nodded to herself and remembered with all the more clarity. “Every day, I knew and I saw that the longer I stayed, the more our paths would entwine and tangle, and the more it… it would _wreck me_ to leave.” BIlbo turned around to face him, sure and steady again. Thorin looked lost, she noticed. Lost, stubborn, confused, and that couldn’t be. They hadn’t survived their quest only to bring Thorin here and have him lose his way again. “You ended your quest with a kingdom, a people to rule, a _purpose_ again,” she said. “I have only Bag End, and I had to go back before I lost that, too.”

Thorin waited a long moment before he said, with his usual gentle touch in these situations, “And you couldn’t have _said that_?”

“When!” Bilbo yelled back. “Before or after that _enchanting_ meeting with the elf king? Before or after the dragon? Before or after all of Laketown trying to kill us? Before or after the battle? Before or after Kíli? Before—”

“There could have been a moment, all we needed was one—”

*

Inside, Frodo left the two guards in the kitchen and approached Dwalin. “Are they still talking?” he asked.

“She’s yelling now,” Dwalin replied.

“Oh, good,” Frodo said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like anything to drink or eat? Your guards think everything is good enough to devour, and we have plenty more for you.”

Dwalin glanced out the front door. Thorin hadn’t even raised his voice yet. This could go on a while.

“Lead the way, hobbit,” Dwalin said.

As Dwalin investigated the pantry, Frodo asked, “So if the King didn’t die in battle, what happened?”

“His nephew died,” Dwalin said. “Kíli. A good lad. Very good lad. He and his brother were defending the king, but only Thorin and Fíli survived that fight.”

“I’m sorry for his loss,” Frodo said.

“I’ll let the king know you said that.”

“Is Erebor nice?”

“Depends what you mean by nice,” Dwalin replied. “I think it’s nice enough, but you live in a toadstool covered in hedges, so you might think a city of stone less nice.”

Frodo climbed up on a stool by the door so he could watch Dwalin from the doorway. Dwalin paid him little mind; living with a family of his own these past years, he had grown used to his family's combination of intense scrutiny and absolute trust.

“So why would Bilbo tell me that the king had died in battle?” Frodo asked.

Dwalin spared Frodo a glance as he assembled a sandwich with several different meats and even a bit of preserves tucked in. (Frodo commented that he would have to try that for himself at some point.) Dwalin looked at him mid-sandwich; Frodo still looked curious, expectant, wondering.

“I think I was wrong about Bilbo,” Dwalin said. “I thought she may have only come on our quest for the treasure, and left the same way when she had it.”

“It was only one small chest,” Frodo said as if by rote. “She keeps it tucked away and never shows it to anyone.”

“A chest of treasure that she pays no attention to at all? Doesn’t use, either?” Dwalin asked. “I know the chest well, hobbit. I carried it to her pony myself. And she hasn’t used any of it?”

Frodo shrugged and asked, “Would you like some ale? We have some, if you don’t like tea.”

Dwalin put up a hand, grabbed a tankard from the shelf, and helped himself from the cask next to where Frodo perched. “You remind me of my son,” Dwalin said. “He takes after my husband more than me. His mother and I think it’s for the best that at least two of us be soft-spoken and nice to other people, while she and I can be ourselves.”

“I think I’m much nicer than Bilbo,” Frodo confided to him.

Dwalin laughed and said, “That’s not hard.”

“You never said why she told me your king was dead,” Frodo said.

He had to take a drink of ale before saying to Frodo, “You’re too sharp for your own good, but you also seem clever, so I’ll tell you something I know.” Frodo’s ears perked up at that and he sat up straighter on the stool, the better to listen, apparently. _Hobbits_.

“If she lied to you,” Dwalin said. “If anyone lies to you, really, you can bet everything you have that it’s because they’re lying to themselves, too.”

Frodo considered it, then hopped off the stool and said, “I’m going to check on Bilbo again.”

“That was good advice!” Dwalin called after him. “You don’t get much better advice than that! That was full of meaning, depth, _experience!_ You little shit.”

*

Bilbo looked up at Frodo calling her from the door. “Bilbo! It’s getting late!”

“Yes, I see that,” Bilbo called back. “Do you need help in the house?”

Frodo slowly came down the steps, offered Thorin a small smile, and asked Bilbo, “Should I get the guest cots out, or will they be leaving?”

Bilbo’s eyes met Thorin’s, and before Thorin could flagellate himself and offer to begin traveling in the middle of the night (the better to get himself killed and _show her_ ), Bilbo told Frodo to get the cots out.

“You and Dwalin can share the guest room,” she said, “But your guards will have to sleep on cots, I’m afraid.”

“They’ve slept on worse.”

“Yes, which is why in my house, they will get _cots_ , Thorin.” She walked around him to the next steps to her door, but turned suddenly to say, “And you’re not to leave before we see you off and give you breakfast. Frodo will be heartbroken if you leave before he has the chance to interrogate you.”

“Is this it, then?” Thorin asked. “Are you going to keep on telling the Shirefolk that you watched me die with a song in your heart?”

Bilbo turned on the step and marched back down to where Thorin was standing, this time a step above him so she could glare him right in the beard. “I can’t believe I almost let you leave with a truce intact when clearly all you want—”

“I want to part on fair terms!” Thorin shouted. “Not good, not even amicable, but _fair_.”

“And how can you leave on _just fair_ terms!” Bilbo asked. “How can you speak so nicely on how close we were and also be content with leaving empty handed?”

“That’s disappointment,” Thorin said. “I’ve known it well, and I’ve made my peace with it in many forms. If you can’t do the same, then I have nothing more I can say.”

*

When Bilbo woke the next morning, it was to the sound of chaos in the kitchen. The night before quickly came back to her and she dressed in a hurry before dashing into the kitchen.

“Mr. Dwalin made biscuits,” Frodo said as he stood at the stove over the bacon.

“Making biscuits, not eating them?” Bilbo asked as she inspected them.

“It was pointed out to me early on in my marriage,” Dwalin said as he moved the biscuits from the cooling rack to a basket, “That if I _made_ biscuits, I could have as many as I wanted.”

“Hmm,” Bilbo said. “Well. That was stupid of your family.”

“Good biscuits, though?” Dwalin said.

Bilbo nodded, impressed, and bid the two guards a good morning as they headed into the next room to begin preparing for the journey out. 

Thorin was sitting at the end of the table at the corner closest to the kitchen window. Bilbo looked over, eyed his coffee, and said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning. Did you want coffee?” Thorin asked.

"I did want scones," Bilbo said, eyeing Dwalin very suggestively. "Though these are just as good, I suppose."

Thorin said, “He worked very hard on those.”

“Not very,” Dwalin said, his defensive edge a bit sharp for the occasion. “They’re just biscuits.”

“Can someone help me prevent this grease fire?” Frodo asked, though Dwalin swooped in to rescue him before he had even gotten the sentence out.

“Did you sleep well?” Bilbo asked Thorin. “Are you ready to leave on your journey?”

“I did and I am,” Thorin said. “And you?”

Bilbo watched as Dwalin and Frodo coaxed the bacon into not burning the kitchen and half the Shire down. She let Thorin pour her a mug of coffee before she slid down the bench and sat across from Thorin. “Better,” she said.

“Is that so?” he asked.

Bilbo reached across and took his hand, linking their fingers together. “Very so.”

Thorin nodded, but when he moved to cover her hand with his other, he knocked over his mug of coffee so it spilled all over the table. Bilbo grabbed a tea towel and said as she sopped up the mess, “This is why you can’t have nice things. It’ll be much better if I keep killing you off in my story before you spill coffee all over Erebor and drown everyone.”

Thorin snatched the tea towel from her hand and took over cleaning up, all while giving her the heartiest glare he could manage before breakfast.

“See if I don’t come back before the new year and invade the Shire,” Thorin warned her.

“Do you promise?” Bilbo teased.

“I already have plans for the new year,” Dwalin said to them. “No invasions.” He looked down at Frodo and said, “No splattering grease in my _face_ , Frodo.”

“Go ahead and kill me if you’d like,” Thorin said, “But it better be a good death. A chorus of maids weeping. Ten choruses, thirty maids apiece. All weeping.”

“Or just Balin,” Bilbo considered.

“I won’t tell him you said that.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks forever to **waldorph** for her help and encouragement and also for reminding me that **leupagus** 's favorite song is taylor swift's [**white horse**](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Xr-JFLxik) and this is basically the best present ever.
> 
> also, i'm aware that frodo here is much less bitchy-mean than his book counterpart. it's because he's young. and because it's christmas. or whatever.


End file.
